Early Allentown school budget boosts taxes

School board acts after hearing pleas of increased arts education for youngest students.

December 21, 2012|By Katrina Wehr, Special to The Morning Call

Allentown School District's preliminary budget passed unanimously Thursday, but not without the input of specialist teachers and concerned parents who want the arts to become a larger part of the elementary school curriculum.

The preliminary budget sets the millage rate at 16.74, a tax increase of 2.6 percent, and still leaves the district with a gap of more than $20 million. The document makes no mention of reinstating art, music, physical education or library classes.

Currently, students at Allentown School District's elementary schools receive their specialist instruction once a week for nine weeks, and then move on to the next specialist class. Specialist teachers told board members the current system is not working.

Elementary music teacher Leslie Monahan said she is making little progress teaching kids lessons and skills due to the schedule. She splits her time between about five of the district's elementary schools, and said she finds herself "re-teaching" more and more each year because the students aren't retaining the information, which they could have learned more than a year ago, in some cases.

Patty Wilburn, a first grade teacher at Hiram W. Dodd Elementary, said often students who transfer in the middle of the year will miss a specialist completely. In her classroom alone, Wilburn said, she had three students transfer and miss at least one of their specials. She questioned what that number would look like schoolwide.

Wilburn also said she has two sons who attend Ritter Elementary School, and she was considering enrolling them in charter schools where the arts are more emphasized in the curriculum.

"I would really hate to have to take them out of Ritter, because they love the school, but I can send them to a school which offers better areas of enrichment," Wilburn said.

Teachers told the board they had come up with a plan that would not cost the district anything and would allow for specialist instruction more often in the elementary schools, and asked that the board consider reconfiguring specialist integration.

"All of us understand and appreciate the value of an arts education," School Director Scott Armstrong said after hearing, "but in public education right now, there is a crisis, not a funding crisis, but an expenditure crisis."

He went on to emphasize that ASD is a poverty school district, and mentioned that poverty levels are "very high" right now.

Director Joanne Jackson asked whether the preliminary budget could allow for talks on expanding arts instruction at a later date.

Superintendent Russ Mayo said reconfiguration of the preliminary budget was not out of the question.

"The budget as presented assumes, because of the deficit, that we will have the same number of positions," Mayo explained. "It does not prohibit reconfiguration, so we will look at reconfiguration."